Ickford Pre-School Incorporating After School Club

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children flourish in this welcoming and bright environment. They are happy and safe and arrive excited for their day. They confidently approach staff and other children to join in with activities. Managers and staff consider children's interests and individual needs when planning the curriculum. This helps them make good progress in their learning. For example, children bring in a toy or object of interest from home to use during show and tell. They take turns talking to their friends about their choice, promoting language and listening skills.

Children behave well. Staff have high expectations of children, and they encourage them to be confident and independent. They help with tasks, such as peeling and cutting fruit for snack time and following instructions during tidy-up time. Children are enthusiastic about their creativity and imaginative play. Staff provide a range of opportunities for children to make choices. For example, they independently choose what they would like to use to make their creations.

Staff recognise the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and support children with communication and social skills. For example, they create spaces where children can go when they are feeling overwhelmed or need to regulate their emotions.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Managers support staff and encourage their personal development. They work with staff to identify their individual needs. Managers organise regular group training, which helps to build on staff's knowledge of specific areas, such as early literacy and mathematics.
• Staff develop children's early literacy skills well. For example, children enjoy telling stories using props, such as in story sacks. Staff provide resources so that they can do this at the pre-school and also at home with their parents. This is building children's knowledge of how stories are structured.
• Staff encourage children to explore through new experiences. For example, children explore ice cubes filled with glitter, paint and bells with their senses. Children choose a tool to try to break open the ice. They talked about how they could break the ice, what the best tool to use was and how long it would take for the ice to melt. This promotes their language and communication and critical thinking.
• During activities with staff, children are encouraged to count. They take this knowledge into their own games and play. For example, children play hide and seek and count to 15 before trying to find each other.
• Staff identify areas of development for children and plan activities to support this. For example, staff recognise that some children starting school next year need extra support with fine motor and early writing skills. They encourage children to practise their pincer grip by using tools to pick up pom-poms, helping to build these skills.
• Parents are very happy with the standard of care and support they receive from the setting. They are especially happy with the feedback they receive about children's progress, achievements and what they have been doing during their day. They use this feedback to talk to the children about their day and support learning at home.
• Children enjoy exploring the outdoor area. They choose from a range of activities and equipment that help to develop their coordination and strength. For example, children become engrossed as they explore troughs filled with mud and diggers and dig to find the toy people buried underneath.
• Children who speak English as an additional language and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities are supported well. Staff build strong relationships with their parents, meaning the children get consistent support and help, both in the setting and at home.
• Staff provide a range of exciting activities for children. However, at the planning stage, they are not fully effective at identifying the full range of knowledge and skills that they can help children develop within them.
• Children create games based on their interests. However, this means that often they prefer to play only these games, and staff are not fully effective at providing support and encouragement to help them explore new learning opportunities.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review planning to help staff identify all potential opportunities to develop children's knowledge and skills within their activities
• support staff to monitor children's engagement in learning and recognise when to encourage children to explore new opportunities.